Left 4 Dead: Cross-Country
by PinkPlasticPrincess
Summary: Taking place around the same time as Left 4 Dead 2, A housewife, a middle schooler, a firefighter and a foreign exchange student are left to fend for themselves and must travel across the country to finally be freed from the infection. (Will include bonus content from canon campaigns later on) Cover image of Savannah by Milizapiainc and MustacheSkulls on deviantART
1. Savannah Townsend

Savannah took one last look at the bodies of her children, but she knew it was useless save for sentimental value. They had been gone for too long now, nothing could bring them back. She had failed to protect them from their father, who had turned into one of _them,_ one of the infected.

If he had been a normal infected, she could've saved them. But what he turned into was something more advanced, something that coughed and hacked, that shot out tentacles from its malformed face. He had captured their young children with that tentacle tongue of his while Savannah was surrounded by a swarm of common infected with nothing but a frying pan in hand. She couldn't get to her children in time. She couldn't kill her husband fast enough.

Savannah's gaze lingered on the corpses of her once beautiful children, and even flickered over to what used to be her husband. She couldn't stay angry at him. She loved him dearly, and it was that damn flu that made him do what he did. It changed him.

She'd keep her wedding ring.

Savannah didn't own anything but dresses. She was a housewife, and a damn proud one. She did, however, change out of her white heels and into a pair of her husband's hiking boots. They were roughly the same shoe size.

She found a fanny pack laying around in the closet where she found the boots. It barely fit around her curvy waist. Savannah huffed about needing to lose weight as she tramped around the house in search of supplies to stuff into the fanny pack. She packed a small bottle of hand sanitizer, some fruit snacks, and a small first aid kit.

Savannah's husband had kept a shotgun in a locked case in the living room. Too impatient to search for the key, she drew her metal frying pan back and swung it into the glass case. The glass shattered, and a jagged hole was left in its wake. Savannah reached in and pulled the shotgun out through the hole in the case. To her pleasure, it was already loaded.

Savannah's green eyes burned into the bodies of her family members. She turned her head, and stepped over the bodies of the infected as she headed out the front door into the blinding sunlight.


	2. Emerson Butler

Emerson sobbed in the upstairs bathroom, tightly gripping her elder brother's guitar as the infected pounded on the door from the other side. Her family was dead, killed by her brother's girlfriend.

"Stay away from her!" Emerson had pleaded to her family as they approached the weeping figure. She saw, just moments before Ashley turned on those that aimed to help her, that her fingers had elongated into claws, which were used to tear Emerson's family to shreds.

"NO!" Emerson screamed as she watched Ashley tear their chests and throats open. "Ashley, stop! _STOP!_"

But it was no use. Ashley wasn't human anymore. She had been infected with the Green Flu.

Emerson grabbed her brother's electric guitar from its stand against the fireplace, raising it above her head as Ashley tore at Emerson's fatally wounded family.

The guitar cried and wailed as Emerson repeatedly brought it down upon Ashley's head, until she finally went still and collapsed onto her brother's open body.

"Mom.. Dad.. Jake.." Emerson whimpered. She couldn't bear to look at their mutilated bodies, not even long enough to close their eyes and give them a more peaceful look. That was when Emerson fled upstairs, locking herself in the bathroom with the guitar.

The pounding on the bathroom door became louder, and eventually Emerson saw a hunk of wood fly past her and land on the tile floor. They were breeching her defenses.

Emerson took two deep breaths before standing up and turning around to face the door. She could see the infected reaching through the jagged hole that they had made in the wood. She unlocked the door and swung it open, rushing towards the infected with Jake's guitar.

"Stay back, stay back!" She warned the infected as they stumbled, but they did not obey. They jabbered and howled, rushing at the brunette.

"I told you to stay back!" Emerson shrieked before whacking them with the wailing guitar.

Some of the infected went down in one hit. Others were simply knocked back and required repeated hits in order to kill them.

Emerson fought the infected for at least two minutes before they stopped coming upstairs, but to the young girl, it felt like an eternity.

As she lowered the guitar, she could hear something out the bedroom window. She could hear noise, she could hear sounds, she could hear gunshots. She could hear other people.

Emerson stepped over the bodies of the infected and leaned her head out the window, looking all around. Just outside her window, she could see a blonde woman in a rose printed sundress shooting at the infected with a gun. A shotgun, perhaps? Emerson wasn't very familiar with guns.

"H-hey!" Emerson called out to her without thinking.

The woman lifted her head in surprise, and gazed up at Emerson with wide eyes before shoving an infected back with her gun, not taking her eyes off of the brunette.

"My god, there are children here!" The woman exclaimed, taking her eyes off of of Emerson now so that she could kill the remaining infected that had noticed her.

That was how Emerson and Savannah met.

"Oh, you're so beautiful." Savannah sighed to Emerson once they were inside the house together. The blonde ran her fingers through Emerson's wavy brown hair, dyed black at the tips. "My son was around your age."

"He.. He passed, then?" Emerson asked nervously, unsure how to address the sensitive issue.

"Sweetie, you've gotta know by now.. Most people are either infected or dead." Savannah touched the girl's shoulder gently.

"I.. I thought we could just wait the flu out in the house." Emerson shook her head, holding it in her hands. "At least that's what Dad said. And then my brother's girlfriend turned into one of them a-and.."

"You don't need to explain any of that to me, sweetie." Savannah told her, standing up right. "What we need to do is get you some proper zombie-fighting attire and get out of here." She gazed down at Emerson's strapless purple dress and black ballet flats.

"All my other clothes are sitting in the washing machine, and this is the only pair of shoes I brought. You see, this is just our vacation house. We don't actually live here." Emerson explained to Savannah.

"Well, shit." Savannah swore before covering her mouth. "Oops.." She leaned forward towards Emerson. "How old are you, sweetie?"

"Thirteen." Emerson answered.

"Oh, we're fine then. You're a teenager." Savannah said in response to her slip up. "But you're too damn young for this end of the world crap. We'll get you some clothes later, alright?" Savannah brushed her braided ponytail off of her shoulder. "Let's grab some supplies and get out of here."

"We have a first aid kit in the downstairs bathroom." Emerson told the blonde.

"Perfect, let's go get it." Savannah nodded for Emerson to lead the way.

Emerson carefully stepped over the bodies of the infected as she descended down the stairs, occasionally glancing back at Savannah to make sure that the woman was still following her.

The brunette covered the right side of her face to shield her vision from her family's corpses just to the right of the base of the stairs. She did not want to look at their mangled forms.

The downstairs bathroom would have been pristine if it weren't for the blood splatters from Ashley's attack. Emerson grimaced, opening up the cabinet above the sink.

What Emerson removed from the cabinet was a red, soft sided first aid kit of a good size, bound to have lots of useful supplies inside of it.

After strapping the first aid kit to Emerson's back, Savannah asked the girl a delicate question. "Do you want to say goodbye to your family before we go?"

Emerson averted her eyes, unable to meet Savannah's gaze. "I already said goodbye to them when I was hiding from the zombies earlier.. I don't want to have to look at their bodies again."

"You don't have to, sweetie." Savannah told her. "Just close your eyes and give me your hand. I'll lead you out the front door."

Emerson obeyed, squeezing her chocolate eyes shut tight and extending her right hand to Savannah, who gripped it firmly before leading the girl around the corpses of her former family.

"I'm your family now, Emerson, sweetie." Savannah told the girl as she guided the brunette out the front door and into the warm sunlight. "As long as we're together, neither of us will be without a family ever again."


	3. Juan Hernandez

Juan gripped his axe tightly. He had been staring off into the abandoned city from where he had locked himself up in the top of the fire station, also abandoned after the spread of the Green Flu. Juan wondered how he hadn't become one of _them _yet. He was sure that the virus was already inside of his body. Was it just waiting, incubating? Had his body successfully fought the infection off? He couldn't remember the specific workings of infectious disease.

He wondered how his wife and children were faring in Mexico. He couldn't exactly turn on a TV somewhere and find out, considering the fact that there was no one left to run a news station, or even the electric company to power the TV.

As Juan's mind lingered on humanity's downfall, his eyes picked up on something that he saw a lot in his line of work. Fire, in the distance.

Juan's chocolate eyes lit up with the distant flames. His heart skipped a beat. As far as he knew, the infected didn't know how to start fires. Could it be that there was someone out there, someone who needed his help?

He stood up in the open window on top of the fire station, his open fire resistant jacket billowing in the night breeze. He had to move quickly. He grabbed the closest fire extinguisher and, with his fireman's axe, set out.

"I'm so sorry, Savannah!" Emerson wailed as she huddled up next to the blonde in the one corner of the office space that the fire hadn't touched. "I meant to throw that molotov out the window and onto the rooftop where that giant zombie was!" But instead, Emerson had hit the window frame, causing the brown bottle to break against the wall and spread its flames throughout the confined space.

"I know you didn't mean it, baby girl." Savannah held Emerson close, wincing as the bright flames hurt her eyes and the growing heat touched her skin. "At least we're taking that bastard down with us." She watched as the flames licked at the corpse of the biggest zombie either of them had ever seen. Savannah hadn't been able to take the beast down with her shotgun alone, and Emerson did the only thing that she could think of to help. It was dead, and soon, they would be, too.

Emerson squeezed her chocolate eyes shut tight as she heard rapid footsteps on the rooftop on the other side of the fire. She just knew it was more infected coming after them in their vulnerable state. The brunette hoped that the infected would fall into the flames in their desperation to harm Savannah and herself.

The heat that irritated her flesh suddenly died away, and the light that penetrated her eyelids faded. Suddenly, it was dark and cold.

Emerson opened her eyes as Savannah squeezed the brunette's shoulder, now looking all around. There was white foam where the flames had been. Emerson noticed that first. Then she noticed a man standing in the middle of the room, a man who didn't look infected. A man who was holding a fire extinguisher. A man who was dressed like a firefighter.

Juan quickly dropped his now depleted fire extinguisher, coming over to the young girl and the woman who were huddled up in the corner of the office space.

"Are you ladies alright?" Juan asked in his heavy Spanish accent, offering a large hand out to each of the females. "What are your names?"

The blonde took his hand first, and Juan hefted her up with a grunt. "We're alright now, thanks to you." She said, gripping her shotgun with both hands once she was back on her feet. "Name's Savannah Townsend."

"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Townsend. My name is Juan Hernandez." He held his hand back out to her, and the two of them engaged in a firm handshake. "Is this your daughter?" Juan nodded to the brunette girl, who was still on the ground. She stared up at Juan like a deer caught in headlights.

"She might as well be." Savannah answered. "The infection's left her an orphan. She and I are traveling together, trying to survive this thing. We were doing just fine. Until that.. That.. _Tank _showed up." Savannah gestured to the singed corpse of the biggest zombie Juan had ever seen. He hadn't realized that the infected could get that big, and it was no surprise to him that the two of them had struggled against it.

Juan gazed down at the girl, who still looked as if she were seeing another world. She reminded him of his middle daughter.

"Hey, you're safe now." He told her, kneeling down in front of her. He saw this a lot in people who narrowly escaped fires. Normally he would give them all the time they needed to recover, but that was before the United States was overrun by people infected with the Green Flu. He had to get her back on her feet. "What's your name?"

The dazed look faded from Emerson's eyes as she realized that she was being spoken to. She looked at Juan clearly instead of gazing right through him with a distant look in her eyes. "My name is Emerson Butler." She answered. "What's yours?"

"You have a very pretty name, Emerson." The man told her. "You can just call me Juan, alright?" He stood up, offering her a hand.

Emerson graciously took Juan's hand, much bigger than her own, and allowed him to help her up. "Thank you for saving us, Juan!" Emerson smiled.

Juan chuckled a bit. "It's what I do."

"Where did you come from, Juan?" Savannah asked suddenly. "Is there anyone else with you?"

"I came from the fire station south of here, but it's just me." He answered. "I'm the only firefighter left. The rest of them either turned into the infected or died fighting."

"Looks like you're with us, then." Savannah told him. "We could use someone like you, especially if there's more of those.. _Tanks.. _Out there."

Juan shrugged. "Hey, we survivors have to stick together, right? Just lead the way."

"I can certainly do that." Savannah nodded, moving to the other side of the room where the door was, blackened by the fire.

Emerson slid a damaged guitar off of her back, holding it by the neck like a baseball bat as she crept after Savannah, who had already moved into the next room.

Juan brandished his axe and, taking one last look at the singed body of the Tank, followed after the women.


	4. Hiro Nakajima

Hiro stood over the body of his host father, a pistol in each hand. He had spent the last year laughing with him, crying with him, and living with him. Now, he was dead, leaving Hiro all by himself in a country that wasn't his.

"Hiro isn't showing any symptoms." He had overheard his host mother saying to his host father in the other room. "You have to evacuate him. He still has a chance."

"I can't just leave you and the kids behind!" Hiro heard his host father protest from where he was eavesdropping out in the hallway.

"Sweetie, you've got to know by now.." His host mother began weakly. "The kids and I aren't going to make it. Go, while you still can.."

"Grab all the canned food you can!" Hiro's host father was suddenly shouting at him, stuffing cans of peas and corn into a duffle bag. Hiro obeyed, grabbing a couple of cans of sliced carrots and dumping them into his school bag before his host father suddenly shoved him out the front door. "Go, go, go!"

Hiro ran after the searchlights in the city, his host father in tow.

Hiro froze momentarily as he heard gunshots, spinning around to see his host father shooting at the infected with pistols.

One of the pistols was suddenly dumped into Hiro's hands. "Come on, don't stop now!" His host father grabbed him by the shoulder.

Hiro ran ahead of his host father for what felt like an eternity. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the other male was still following him, and was surprised to see that he was not.

The raven haired male stopped dead in his tracks, staring his father figure kneeling on the ground with his head down, seemingly catching his breath.

Hiro hurried over to his host father, ready to help him back on his feet when the male suddenly jerked his head up, growling at Hiro with yellowish teeth and sunken eyes. Hiro stumbled back, realizing that his host father had turned.

The pistol fell from his host father's hand, which was turning gray along with the rest of his skin. The infected man staggered towards Hiro, who backed up against a dumpster.

Hiro's whole body trembled as he slowly raised his pistol at his host father. "Forgive me." He let out and squeezed his eyes shut tight. A gunshot followed.

Hiro opened his chocolate eyes in surprise, gazing down at the body of his now deceased host father. He was confused. He hadn't pulled the trigger.

Not waiting to figure out what had happened, Hiro grabbed the second pistol from near his host father's body, now armed with two.

He stared down at the man's body before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Now there was no one. He was all by himself in the United States.

Hiro suddenly heard rapid footsteps approaching. Thinking it was more of the infected, he tightened his grip on the pistols and opened his chocolate eyes.

What he saw was not an infected, but rather a healthy looking caucasian girl, several years younger than himself. She was wielding a severely damaged guitar, stained with blood. "Are you alright?!" She cried out.

Hiro didn't answer immediately. He watched as two middle aged adults ran up from behind the girl. A hispanic man with an axe and a caucasian woman with a shotgun.

"I.. Am alright." Hiro let out after a moment, staggering a bit.

"What's your name? Do you wanna come with us?" The girl asked.

"We don't have time for introductions." The woman said sternly. "We need to get to the evacuation center before it's too late."

"Guess you're coming with us." The man said to Hiro in a heavy Spanish accent as the woman turned down an alley, the brunette girl following her.

Hiro gazed at the body of his host father one last time. His eyes met those of the hefty Hispanic man. Hiro nodded, gripping his pistols, and ran after the females.


	5. DEATH DUNGEON - 1 - The Blacktop

_Death Dungeon - 1 - The Blacktop_

Savannah stopped dead in her tracks, gazing up at the night sky. The searchlights marking their evacuation center had suddenly been shut off. Dozens of helicopters were rapidly taking flight.

"Savannah?" Emerson sounded as if she were about to cry. "What's happening? What are they doing?"

"_Dios mios." _Juan let out, turning away from the sight and pacing.

"We have to keep heading to the evacuation center." Savannah told the others. "It's our only chance." If we're lucky, someone will still be there to evacuate us."

"And if there isn't someone left to evacuate us?" Emerson asked with rising panic in her voice.

"We'll figure something else out." Savannah told her. "In the meantime, we need to find the fastest way to the evac center." The blonde turned to Hiro. "You, new kid. Do you happen to live around here? If so, can you guide us?"

"My name is Hiro." The raven haired male said, taking the first opportunity to introduce himself. "I do live around here. I believe that the quickest way would be to go through the medieval festival not far from here."

"Great. Lead us there." Savannah instructed without a second thought or even introducing herself.

"The festival should be this way." Hiro said, moving past Savannah and continuing down the alley that she had already started down.

The city had seen better days, but it was unclear whether it became the way it was before or after the infection spread. The infected were known to be destructive. The only person who would have insight to the city's status would be Hiro, but he didn't say anything either way. Litter covered the ground. Buildings had gaping holes in their sides or were crumbling away. Fires burned away in metal barrels.

As the group of four turned down another alley, a short, chain link fenced blocked their path in between two cement buildings.

"Are we going to have to go another way?" Juan asked until he saw Savannah pushing past Hiro and climbing on top of what looked like giant spools of thread. He wasn't entirely sure what the English word for them was. As he realized that they were cable spools, Savannah dropped down on the other side of the fence.

"Are you sure that this is okay to do?" Emerson asked from on top of the spools as Juan suddenly realized what the other survivors were doing.

"There's no one around to say that it isn't okay." Savannah informed the girl as Juan hurried over to get on the spools behind Hiro. "Here, I'll help you down." The blonde passed her shotgun over to her left hand, extending her right arm out to Emerson.

"Here goes!" The brunette bent her knees and leapt, grasping onto Savannah's hand as she landed.

Savannah seemed to crouch down with Emerson, doing everything in her power to keep the girl stable as she landed. She gently pulled the brunette out of the way, making room for Hiro and Juan to come down over the fence.

"Where to now, Hiro?" Emerson asked the raven haired male with big, chocolate eyes.

"We should head out of this alley and onto Grand Avenue." Hiro told her, taking the lead again.

Hiro blindly walked past the back of an open delivery truck when Savannah suddenly stopped him, grabbing the shoulder of his crisp, white shirt.

"Hold on a second. It looks like there's something in the back of that truck. Juan, go see what it is. I think you might find it useful."

"Eh?" Juan let out, and the youngest two members of the group directed their attention to the Hispanic man. "Alright, if you say so." He set his fire axe inside of the dirty, white truck before hefting himself inside the back with a grunt. Leaving his axe where it was, he headed into the darkness of the back of the vehicle.

"It uh, looks like it's a combat rifle, I think?" Juan walked out of the shadows of the truck with a black and dirty cream gun in his hands. "You wanted me to use this, Savannah?"

"Well, Hiro and I can't be the only ones shooting. Once we find another reasonable gun, we'll give it to him so he can deal some more damage than he can do with those pistols." Savannah nodded her head towards the raven haired boy.

"I've never shot one of these before." Juan said as he strapped his fire axe to his back for safekeeping. "I don't suppose there's time to figure it out?" He asked.

"Absolutely not." Savannah answered before Juan was even finished speaking. "We need to evacuate immediately."

"Alright then. I guess I'll just try to figure it out as we go." Juan responded.

Hiro and Savannah were the first to exit the alley onto the nearest street. To the left was a tall barricade, meaning the only way to go was to the right down the other direction of the street. Savannah glanced up at the traffic lights over head, which were no longer functioning, and eyed the street sign mounted near them. They were on Grand Avenue, right where they needed to be.

There were a few idling infected along Grand Avenue. Savannah raised her shotgun, picking them off before they could notice the group.

"Where to now, Hiro?" Savannah asked as Emerson and Juan caught up to them.

"We should continue down Grand Avenue for awhile." Hiro told her. "It should lead us almost straight to the festival."

Emerson gazed up at the night sky as the group continued down Grand Avenue. The sky was orange with flames of destruction, and smoke billowed up from some of the buildings.

It was quiet save for the occasional firing of Savannah's shotgun. Juan didn't get to test out his new combat rifle at first, and with Savannah on the case, the infected never got close enough for Hiro to fire his pistols or Emerson to wield her guitar.

"Damn truck's in the way." Savannah commented as they came upon a white semi parked diagonally, nearly entirely blocked their path. "..And it's filthy. You can barely even tell that it's supposed to be white."

"Looks like we're squeezing around it." Juan says, moving ahead of Savannah and Hiro with the combat rifle in hand.

"Be careful now." He says to the other survivors, carefully weaving in between cars on the backside of the semi truck. "Looks like some of these cars have alarms set. If we touch them and they go off, they might summon a horde."

"We know." Savannah rolled her eyes as she moved past Juan.

"You and Emerson know, but Hiro might not." Juan pointed out.

Savannah scoffed, carefully picking off a few more infected with her shotgun without shooting any of the cars that were flashing red. Hiro made a mental note about Emerson's name once it had been mentioned. He thought he knew everyone's names now.

Emerson had been hearing a deep groaning sound on and off for awhile now, but had been unable to spot anything. She suspected that it was one of the special infected that Juan had nicknamed a "Boomer". She could hear it again, and it sounded closer than before.

"Um, you guys-" Emerson let you, gripping her guitar tightly.

"Not now, baby. We've got to get to that festival." Savannah didn't even both to look in Emerson's direction as she navigated around the cars with the men.

Emerson looked from side to side frantically as the groaning became even louder. There was nothing in her line of view. The brunette froze in fear when she realized that she hadn't checked behind her yet.

Emerson knew that she had to act quickly. If she didn't, and the Boomer was nearby, it would projectile vomit it's bile onto her, and a horde of infected would come running to her location.

Gripping the neck of her guitar, Emerson quickly spun around to find her face in the bulging belly of what was clearly a Boomer.

Her eyes widened.

Before she even had time to react, mucus green bile poured out of the Boomer's mouth onto Emerson's head. She squeezed her eyes shut, letting out a scream and then closing her mouth as the foul bile streamed down her face and onto her chest.

Upon hearing Emerson cry out, Savannah immediately whirled around with her braided ponytail bouncing behind her. "Emerson's in trouble!" The blonde shouted, not hesitating to turn back for the girl. The flashing cars that she had so carefully weaved through were now plowed through in order to get to Emerson.

"Savannah, you just tripped an alarm!" Juan cried out as a brown car began to shriek.

But it didn't matter. The oncoming horde of infected was already flooding towards Emerson.

The brunette girl blindly swung her damaged guitar at the infected closing in on her. One of the infected that she hit was the Boomer. Hitting it with her close-combat weapon resulted in her receiving a second dose of its bile.

"I'm coming, baby girl!" Savannah put her shotgun away on her back, pulling out her frying pan instead. With the infected so tightly knit with Emerson, she didn't want to risk shooting the girl on accident.

Juan looked over his shoulder, seeing infected climbing out of nearby apartment windows in their attraction to the Boomer bile that Emerson was covered in.

"Guess this is as good a time as ever." Juan said, raising his combat rifle to the main window that the infected were pouring out of. He pulled the trigger, bursts of bullets coming out of the gun as he did so. It was somewhere in between a stream of bullets and a single shot. Either way, it proved effective at taking down the infected spilling out of the window that he had chosen to target.

The infected that were missed by Juan came out the window, close enough to the two men that Hiro could take them out with his pistols before they could reach Savannah and Emerson.

The effect of the bile seemed to be wearing off. Less and less infected were coming up on the scene. Savannah bashed the head in of one last infected with her frying pan before coming up behind Emerson and gently grabbing her shoulder. "Baby girl, it's me. It's over. They're dead."

Emerson put her head down, reaching her hands under the skirt of her purple, strapless dress and wiping her face clean with the fabric. She gazed down into a puddle on the ground, illuminated by an overhead streetlight. She smelled awful. She _looked _awful. But it was over.

Emerson's lip suddenly began to tremble as Juan and Hiro came over to see if she was alright.

"Oh, no, baby girl. Don't start now." Savannah began, rubbing the girl's shoulder in a spot where there wasn't Boomer bile.

"But I'm covered in it." Emerson protested as tears welled up in her eyes and then quickly spilled over. "And it smells bad. How are we going to get it out of my hair and clothes? I can't stay like this forever!" The girl's face reddened as the waterworks started.

"We will figure something out!" Juan promised, taking a step closer to Emerson until he got a whiff of the Boomer bile. After that, he subtly stepped back. "Err, right?" He looked to Hiro and Savannah.

"There's a river at the festival." Hiro informed the others. "She could try and wash up there. I'm sorry, it is the best I can come up with."

Savannah's facial expression shifted into one of anger. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but stopped, realizing that they didn't have many other options in terms of cleaning Emerson.

"We still need to evacuate." Savannah reminded them. "Cleaning may need to wait until after we're rescued, but we'll see." She informed the others, namely Emerson.

Hearing that seemed to cheer Emerson up, because the waterworks ceased. The girl sniffed a bit, wiping the tears from her face on a clean part of her arm.

"Let's get going." Savannah nodded back towards the alarm-ridden cars. "Hiro, lead the way."

Once they had waved through all of the flashing cars, Hiro suddenly stopped. He heard something, and it sounded like a female crying. "That.. Is not Emerson, is it?" He asked, turning around to look at the others who were slowing down behind him. When he saw Emerson, he realized that she was fine, and that she even had a puzzled look on her face.

"Why are we stopping?" The girl asked before she suddenly heard crying, too, and bit her lip momentarily. "That sounds just like Ashley right before she killed my family!" Emerson whispered in a panic before turning to the blonde. "Savannah! Turn off your flashlight! It's one of them!"

Savannah switched out her frying pan for the shotgun on her back, immediately turning off the flashlight that was mounted on top of it.

"We have to find her so we can avoid her." Emerson informed the others. "Or at least figure out where her general location is. Zombies like her are _really _dangerous! One took out my family single-handedly!" Without the light of a flashlight to guide them, Emerson moved in the light of the streetlights. The crying was growing louder. Emerson gripped the neck of her guitar tightly.

"I don't like this.." Juan mumbled, holding his combat rifle as he lingered in the back of the group, looking from side to side.

"I'm gonna give her something to cry about." Savannah huffed under her breath as she loaded a few rounds into her shotgun.

"Shhh.." Emerson turned over her shoulder to silence the others, still walking forward until she suddenly heard growling. She had nearly walked right into the long-clawed special infected, who was sitting on the steps of a building complex nearby.

The gray-skinned special infected began to growl right as Emerson nearly tripped over her, and then the girl immediately fled further down Grand Avenue in desperation to get away from the creature. With nowhere to go but forward, Juan and Savannah raced after Emerson.

Hiro stood dumbfounded in the female infected's line of sight, unsure of what to do. He had never encountered an infected like her before.

"Hiro, get away from her!" Emerson cried out from where she was in the middle of the road, several yards away.

The raven haired boy looked like he was at a complete loss as to what to do. As he took a step forward, the infected woman stood up and spread her arms. Hiro's eyes widened. He could see her terrible claws and heard her growls turn to screams. The second her foot moved from the steps, he fired his pistols at her.

"NO!" Emerson cried out as the woman began to maul Hiro, knocking him to the ground. His pistols didn't seem to do much of anything to her.

"He's gonna die if we don't do something." Savannah said to the others, but Emerson was already running over to Hiro and the infected woman with a furious battle cry.

"You leave Hiro alone, you, you _WITCH!" _Emerson cried out, bringing her guitar into the side of the infected woman's body.

Emerson had struck the Witch with so much adrenaline-fueled force that, to her surprise, the guitar snapped in two, leaving the brunette without a weapon.

"STOP IT!" Emerson shrieked, dropping the remains of her guitar and opting to pull at the Witch's pale tresses to try to get her to stop her relentless attack on Hiro, who was still firing his pistols at her from the ground.

Suddenly, a close gunshot was heard, and the Witch went limp. Emerson could see two, gaping holes on either side of the woman's head and immediately let go of her hair, allowing the Witch's body to fall to the ground.

Emerson and Hiro both glanced over to where Juan and Savannah were standing to see that Savannah was still standing in the position of having just fired her shotgun. Emerson nodded in Savannah's direction before hurrying over to Hiro.

"Are you okay?!" She asked him as she helped him up. "You look like you're hurt pretty bad."

It was true. Hiro's button down shirt was sliced open, leaving red gashes all over his chest and abdomen. His face was red, and it took him a moment to catch his breath, "I'll.. Be fine." He promised her, moving more slowly towards Savannah and Juan. "We're almost to the festival grounds.. I can see the castle from here.. It's just a little further.."

"I hear growling. There's a Hunter around." Savannah informed the others. "Hiro, Emerson, stay close."

Emerson, who was vulnerable to the Hunter because she no longer had a weapon, got underneath Hiro's arm to offer him a shoulder. In the process, she smeared a little bit of Boomer bile on Hiro's torn clothing.

"I'm fine, really." He insisted to her as the two of them came up behind Juan and Savannah.

"No, you're not!" Emerson told him firmly as she gave him a hand. "If you get pounced by a Hunter with your injuries, you could be in serious trouble!"

"What is.. A Hunter?" Hiro asked as out of the corner of his eye, he saw an infected in dark clothing come out of an alley, keeping close to the ground.

Savannah immediately backed away when she saw the creature round the corner, but Juan was not fast enough. The dark clothed infected leapt into the air, screeched, and landed onto the Hispanic man, all in the blink of an eye. An eye that, depending on which survivor it belonged to, would have been chocolate brown or olive green.

Just as quickly, Savannah ran forward, releasing a bullet from her shotgun into the infected's head. It died instantly, letting out a pathetic yelp as it went limp. Juan pushed the body of the special infected aside before he helped himself up with a grunt.

".._That's _a Hunter." Emerson informed Hiro, helping him to move past the body of the creature that had attacked Juan.

Hiro took in the features of the Hunter as he and Emerson walked past it, so that he knew what to look out for in the future. The Hunter seemed to be wearing a ripped and bloodied blue sweatshirt, the hood of which covered the upper half of its, presumably his, face.

"Looks like a nasty one." Hiro commented to Emerson as they inched along.

Savannah, who was trotting ahead with Juan, constantly looked back over her shoulder at the two youngest members of the group. Each time, she looked more and more impatient.

"Hiro, I kind of need you to guide us." She called back to them.

"But Savannah, Hiro is really hurt!" Emerson protested.

"We'll find him some first-aid, we just need him to guide us!" Savannah responded.

"Keep down Grand Avenue.. Just a little longer." Hiro let out as he moved with Emerson. "Then turn down onto Halleck Street."

As Savannah turned to face forward again, she was surprised to see a Boomer stagger out from behind a mailbox in front of her and Juan. In the brief moment she had to look at it, she suspected that it was female, which was confirmed by the slightly higher pitched groaning sounds that it made than the male Boomer encountered earlier.

Savannah stepped back with Juan as the Boomer closed in on them, raising her shotgun to take aim at the Boomer and shoot it before it could vomit bile on them. To the blonde's surprise, the Boomer exploded into two segments before she could even fire off a shot from her gun, and from a safe enough distance that she and Juan weren't covered in bile.

"I got it!" Juan cheered. "Let's go, I see Halleck Street!"

Savannah blinked her olive green eyes in surprise before smirking. "Not bad. Here, hold on a second." The blonde passed her gun into her other hand and unzipped her fanny pack, digging around in it. She pulled out a small, partial bottle of pain relievers before zipping the pack closed.

"Take these." She went over to Hiro and Emerson, handing the pills to the raven haired boy. "They'll help you feel better."

"Thank you." Hiro nodded to her, taking the bottle and popping the cap. He tilted his head back and downed the few pills that were in the bottle dry. They must have had a placebo effect on him, because he perked up before the pills even had a chance to start working.

"Alright, I'm ready to go." Hiro announced, moving away from Emerson and running ahead to lead the way.

"That's more like it." Savannah nodded before gesturing for Emerson to run with her to where the men were.

As Savannah and Emerson ran to catch up with Juan and Hiro, the brunette stopped at the back of an open delivery truck, having spotted something inside. Two somethings, to be exact.

One of the somethings was a rusted crowbar. The other something was a clear, glass jar that had a biohazard symbol on it. The jar was filled with a familiar green liquid.

"Emerson, what are you doing? We've got to go!"

The brunette grabbed both of the items and ran after Savannah.

As Emerson caught up to the others, she could hear laughter that some people might choose to describe as being deranged.

"It's one of those little ridey things!" Emerson cried out, looking around for the source of the unhinged laughter as she attached the jar that she had recently collected to the hip of her dress.

Juan began to fire his combat rifle in a line as a small, humpback infected came from behind a car further down Grand Avenue towards the survivors in a zig-zag motion. However, Juan's aim wasn't on point, and the magazine in his gun ran out before he could deal any real damage. "Reloading!" He called out, and began to do just that.

Almost immediately after Savannah and Hiro began to fire at the special infected, it leapt onto Emerson's head and upper back.

"Get it off, GET IT OFF!" She screamed, walking and wobbling aimless as the small infected giggled, seemingly steering her as it clawed at her face with its bloody red fingers and pulled at her wavy hair. Emerson raised the crowbar she had grabbed above her head, trying to pry the infected off to no avail.

Hiro fired his twin pistols at the creature that was riding Emerson. Because they were moving around so awkwardly, he had to be careful that he didn't accidentally shoot her. He aimed for the bulging spine on the creature's back and hoped for the best.

The creature gave one last frenzied giggle before going limp and sliding off of Emerson to the ground. The girl stumbled, her rusty crowbar still raised above her head. She tumbled backwards, landing on her rear onto the hard pavement. Blood began to gush from her right nostril.

"Baby girl, you're bleeding." Savannah quickly went over to her, trying to get her back on her feet first thing. "Why is your nose bleeding, baby girl?"

"That zombie's long fingers went pretty far up my nose when it was clawing my face!" The brunette reported as blood splattered onto the skirt of her dress, and then the blacktop as she was helped up. She moved the rusty crowbar into her right hand, pinching her nose with the left.

"Stay close and try to defend yourself the best that you can." Savannah told the girl now that she could only wield her weapon with one hand. "We'll be to the festival soon."

"I couldn't even hit that thing!" Juan told the others as they turned down onto Halleck Street. "I ran out of bullets and had to reload. That zombie reminded me of.. What's the English world for people who ride horses?"

"We just call them "horse riders" usually, unless they race and are a professional. Then they're called "jockeys"." Savannah answered, pausing to shoot a few idle infected that were further down Halleck Street.

"Yeah, a Jockey!" Juan nodded. "I hope there aren't any more of them. Of zombies like that, I mean."

"We're here." Hiro announced to the others, shooting some oncoming infected with his pistols. "I see the ticket stand for the festival."

"Looks like it's a safe room, too!" Savannah called out, recognizing the gray, white, and brick colored steel door. "Everybody get inside!"

As the group began to approach the entrance to the festival grounds, tens of rapid footsteps as well as incoherent sounds could be heard from behind them.

Savannah turned around, running backwards towards the safe room while firing her shotgun at the horde of infected that was closing in on them. "Move, move, move!" She demanded the others.

Emerson hit infected left and right with her rusty crowbar, trying not to get too far away from Savannah since she was only able to wield her weapon with one hand for the time being.

Juan was backing slowly towards the safe room, weaving a stream of bullets into the oncoming infected from his combat rifle. This seemed to be taking out the majority of them.

Hiro had already made it inside of the safe room and was guarding the doorway with his pistols from the few infected that managed to sneak past the others. He was so on edge that he nearly mistook Savannah for one of the infected when she suddenly rounded the corner with Emerson and Juan in tow.

The look in Savannah's olive green eyes when she saw Hiro's pistols pointed at her was enough to startle some men to death and subsequently bring them back to a life not worth living.

"You _better_ not shoot me." She warned, shoving Hiro aside with Emerson and Juan following her into the safe room.

Hiro mentally noted to himself never to make Savannah cross with him, then closed and secured the safe room door.


	6. DEATH DUNGEON - 2 - The Festival Grounds

_**Death Dungeon - 2 - Festival Grounds**_

Hiro sat against the safe room wall with his knees bent and his legs spread. He was breathing through his mouth somewhat heavily. The effects of the pills were beginning to wear off of him now. He leaned his head back against the wall, gazing up at just some of the graffiti that lined nearly every inch of the safe room. He couldn't ready any of it at this angle.

"_The city is overrun. Get out while you can."_ Emerson read a strip of graffiti from a wall to Hiro's right. "Huh." The girl turned away from the wall as she pondered what she had just read. Her nose had stopped bleeding ten or fifteen minutes ago, and everyone hoped that it wouldn't start up again.

Hiro lowered his head as a red, soft-sided first-aid kit was suddenly dropped at his feet. His eyes lingered on it for a moment before he lifted his head up at the person who had dropped it to him.

Savannah gazed down at Hiro, her hands on her hips. "Well, are you going to heal up or what?" She asked him before walking a foot or two away to a desk in the safe room where supplies were laid out.

The blonde grabbed some ammunition for her shotgun off the pile on the gray desk. There seemed to be three guns laying along the back of the desk, as well. Savannah picked up the closest one, a chrome shotgun.

"Hiro, take this." The blonde turned around to see that Hiro had finished healing his wounds with the first-aid kit. She held the fully-loaded chrome shotgun out to him, which differed slightly from the pump shotgun that she had taken from her husband's gun cabinet.

Hiro zipped up the first-aid kit to save the remaining supplies before carefully taking the chrome shotgun from her. "Huh? You trust me with a big gun, Savannah?"

"It's not that heavy duty. You should be able to handle it." Savannah said to him. "Try shooting some zombies out the safe room door to get a feel for it. Juan, Emerson, grab some first-aid and let's get out of here."

"On it!" Emerson nodded, going to retrieve first-aid for Juan herself from the desk as the middle-aged man rose from his corner of the safe room with a grunt.

Hiro had barely taken out two infected that were lingering on the festival side of the safe room by the time that the other three survivors were ready to go.

"Have you practiced?" Savannah asked without giving the raven haired boy an opportunity to answer. "Great, let's get out of here." She nudged Hiro aside, unbarring the safe room door and kicking it open.

Immediately, the nearby infected turned their heads to the sound of the safe room door opening, and spotted Savannah. The infected, men and women alike, perhaps even some gender non-conforming, were all dressed the medieval part. They made incoherent growling and shrieking noses as they rushed towards the blonde.

Savannah shot the closest infected first. Most of them appeared to be men, because they were wearing tunics and leggings that allowed them to run more quickly than the women who were wearing dresses or long skirts. Some of the infected women, infact, tripped over their dresses and skirts, making them easy targets for Hiro as he stepped out of the safe room after Savannah.

Emerson inched out from behind Hiro and Savannah, clawing her rusty crowbar into the face of an infected woman who was wearing a gorgeous, sapphire blue gown. She appeared to represent a slightly higher class than some of the other infected women, though it was all for show. The woman clawed at the air as she collapsed at Emerson's feet.

"Watch out!" Hiro suddenly called out, rushing forward and shoving a peasant man with his shotgun before said infected man could get to Emerson.

"Thanks!" Emerson breathed, turning and clawing that same infected with her crowbar.

Savannah moved forward ten feet over the corpses of the infected they had killed so far. She climbed up on top of a wooden picnic table that had seen better days and crouched, taking aim in the general direction of a particular festival tent that lots of infected were running around the back of. One particular object under the tent caught her eye. A white, somewhat cylindrical barrel. She took her aim and fired her pump shotgun before the majority of the infected could get too far away from the festival tent.

Almost instantly, an explosion of a small radius that was a safe enough distance from the survivors erupted, sending the limbs of several infected into the air before they drifted down onto the ground and the tops of nearby tents and picnic tables that managed to survive the explosion. The tents and picnic tables closest to the explosion did not survive.

"Woah!" Juan held onto his firefighter's hat as he finally exited the safe room, though there was really not need for him to hold onto it now. "_Dios mios, _what just happened over there?"

"Propane tank." Savannah answered quickly, hopping down the other side of the picnic table that face the direction of the explosion. "I shot it to kill a bunch of them at once."

"Don't do that again!" Juan told her more out of fear than from authority as a firefighter. "..Someone could get really hurt, you know!"

"I'll do what I have to." Savannah responded, walking across the short, drying grass in her hiking books towards the area where the explosion had taken place.

Emerson's chocolate eyes scanned the festival grounds in the distance, slightly past the striped tents that were closest to them. Her eyes widened when she suddenly saw a bigger infected.

"Um, you guys. I see a big zombie." Emerson pointed, moving her finger at the infected stumbled back and forth from behind tents.

"What?" Savannah turned to look at her. "Is it a Tank?"

Emerson suddenly heard a long cry and saw dust billow up as the infected crashed into a wall separating the remains of the tent that had exploded from a whole section of perfectly new tents that the survivors hadn't explored yet. The brunette sighed in relief, but just a little bit. "No, it's one of those guys with the one big arm and the other little dangly arm."

As Emerson finished explaining to the others what the creature was, the special infected had recovered, and now lined up with the group of survivors before charging at them with a roar.

The charging beast barreled into all four survivors, stumbling Savannah, Hiro, and Emerson. Juan, however, was picked up in the infected's big hand and carried off until the two of them collided into the picnic table closest to the safe room.

As the other survivors stumbled and tried to regain their balance, the special infected began to repeatedly smash Juan into the ground with its unnaturally big arm.

"Uncle, UNCLE!" Juan cried out as if he were being tickled, but that did nothing to stop the relentless attacks. As the infected lifted him up, Juan tried punching at the creature's big arm that had a hold on him.

It did not let go.

Hiro and Savannah ran towards Juan and the special infected, releasing bullets from their shotguns into its back until it finally went limp and released him. When its tight grip on him finally loosened, Juan did not get up right away.

Emerson was at his side in an instant to get him back on his feet. "You aren't hurt too bad, are you, Juan?" She asked with obvious worry in her voice.

"I'm not hurt too bad." He responded, wincing as he got back on his feet with her help.

Savannah took the opportunity to load a few more rounds into her shotgun, and Hiro copied her once he noticed what she was doing. "If that's the case, then let's keep going." She turned and began to head in the direction that the explosion had taken place in.

The other survivors followed after Savannah as she rounded the corner that the charging infected had come from with Juan limping somewhat. The blonde briefly looked at the stone wall that the charging infected had crashed into before charging at Juan. If the wall weren't already damaged from the explosion that had occured right next to it, the wall was certainly damaged now.

Around the corner of the damaged stone wall had been more lingering infected that noticed the survivors as they came up on the scene. From around the pale, striped festival tents, the festively dressed infected rushed at the survivors.

Savannah and Hiro unloaded their shotguns into the oncoming infected, some bullets going right through their targets and ripping holes into the festival tents.

"Maybe we.. Maybe we should search these tents as we go by.." Juan suggested, unloading a burst of bullets into oncoming infected while Emerson defended his backside with her rusty crowbar. "..Just in case there's something useful hiding away in them." From how out of breath he was, it sounded like he was hoping for a quick pick-me-up.

"I suppose we have time for that while we try to find a way to cut through here." Savannah responded, turning the flashlight mounted on her shotgun back on now that the majority of the nearby infected seemed to be eliminated.

"Thank you, Savannah." Juan breathed graciously, limping over to a white and green striped tent to search it for supplies.

Emerson and Hiro dispersed into nearby tents of their own, leaving Savannah by herself. She aimed her flashlight into Emerson's tent to give the girl a bit of extra light until she heard squealing in the distance.

Savannah immediately turned to face the end of the aisle of tents that they were currently in. Running in a staggering kind of gait was a female infected with a body type not too different from Savannah's own in terms of the abdominal area. Green liquid dripped from the mouth of the squealing infected. The blonde fired a few shots at her, but missed because the infected woman was moving too much and the shotgun simply did not fire quickly enough.

Emerson rushed out of her tent, carrying a white and yellow tube in her spare hand. She slid to a halt as a glob of acidic, green goo was projected perpendicular to her face.

The goo landed at Savannah's feet, immediately pooling out into an acidic patch and burning away at the soles of the blonde's hiking boots.

"Ow, dammit!" Savannah cried out as the bubbling liquid splattered onto her exposed legs, stinging her. She quickly shuffled to the right out of the acidic patch and fired off the last round in her shotgun at the offending infected.

The bullet hit the special infected in her elongated throat, causing her to go down with one last squeal and release a smaller patch of acid at her corpse. Savannah immediately began to reload her shotgun as if it were nothing.

"It's one of those spitting ladies!" Emerson commented once she had recovered from having nearly been hit with the ball of acid spit.

"Are you two done in those tents yet?" Savannah groaned loudly as the original acid patch behind her dissipated away.

"Yes, sorry!" Hiro and Juan both came out of tents diagonal from each other. Juan seemed to look significantly better, as if he had taken the opportunity to heal up or something. He had a bottle of pills and a white, short cylindrical object with a fuse strapped to his waist.

"I thought you didn't want us causing explosions?" Savannah crossed her arms when she saw the item with the fuse. "So why do you have a pipe bomb?"

"You can throw a pipe comb further away than you can back away from and safely shoot a propane tank!" Juan insisted. "Look, I even found a lighter to light the fuse!" He held up an opaque, brown lighter.

"Hypocrite." Savannah scoffed, turning away from Juan and instead facing the youngest members of the group. "What did you two find?"

"But brown lighters are lucky!" Juan shook the lighter in the air, the fluid swishing around inside of it.

"I found an adrenaline shot!" Emerson proudly held up her white and yellow tube.

"I found this brown bottle." Hiro said, holding up what looked like a beer bottle with a fuse in it.

"I'll take that." Savannah reached out and snatched the brown bottle from Hiro's hands, attaching it to the side of her fanny pack.

Hiro's eyes widened as he watched her do so. "Why did you do that? What is it?"

"It's a molotov." Emerson answered. "I'm not allowed to have them right now. I guess you aren't, either."

"It's not that you're not _allowed _to have one." Savannah tried to explain to the girl.

"Then what is it?" Emerson asked, gazing up at Emerson. Suddenly, all of the chocolate brown eyes were on Savannah.

The blonde's olive green eyes searched her surroundings momentarily, as if that would help her come up with an answer. "It's that-"

Everyone suddenly turned their attention to a strong oak tree idly growing in between the tents where a very close, deep groan erupted from. A special infected was, not so successfully, trying to hide behind the trunk of the tree. Although the tree trunk was wide, the infected was much wider.

"It's a Boomer!" Emerson cried out, quickly forgetting her question for Savannah as she retreated a few feet away behind the blonde along with Hiro.

Unsurprisingly, Savannah was the one that fired first, her bullet grazing the exposed belly of the Boomer that stuck out from behind the trunk of the oak tree. He exploded into two segments. His lower half stood there for a moment before slowly falling backwards on the grass that was slightly longer, greener, and all around healthier around the base of the tree than in other parts of the festival grounds. The upper half, however, became lodged in the canopy of the oak tree.

"..Speaking of Boomers." Savannah began as she lowered her shotgun, hoping no one would start up again about the molotov. "Hiro, where's that river or whatever so we can get Emerson cleaned up?"

"It should be this way." Hiro move on ahead, leading the way down the center aisle of the festival tents with the other survivors following after him until Emerson ran up next to him.

"Hey, Hiro?" Emerson asked as she walked alongside the raven haired boy. "How come it seems like you know this place so well? Have you been here before?"

"Once." Hiro responded as he and Emerson stepped over the spitting infected's corpse. "My host family brought me here for educational purposes."

"Your host family?" Emerson suddenly thought back to when she had first met Hiro. He had been struggling against a single common infected, as if that person were a loved one that he didn't have the heart to kill.

"Yes." Hiro nodded, heading down a slope to a riverbank. "I had been staying with them ever since I first came over from Japan."

Emerson opened her mouth to speak when Savannah suddenly beat her to it.

"Go on and clean up, baby girl. We don't have a lot of time." The blonde said to her from the top of the slope overlooking the river.

"Got it!" Emerson called back, slipping out of her black ballet flats and stepping on the smooth sided yet unevenly placed stones of the riverbank.

The barefoot girl stepped into the clear, running water and immediately retracted her foot.

"It's cold!" She let out.

"Which do you care more about? Temperature or cleanliness?" Savannah gave the girl a gentle verbal nudge as she had often done with her own children, and the brunette gazed up at her before making her decision and stepping back into the river.

"Make sure she doesn't get swept away, now." Savannah called down to Hiro as Emerson bent down to wash herself of the dried and caked on Boomer bile in the flowing water.

"Is it just me, or is it unusually quiet?" Juan turned to Savannah on the top of the slope, and got the blonde thinking.

"Now that you mention it, we haven't encountered any zombies since we passed that spitting one's corpse."

"Wait, I think I hear-"

Juan wasn't able to finish what he was saying as a battle cry coming from behind took both of the adults by surprise. They didn't even have time to turn around before an abnormally large hand reached out and grabbed Savannah as the body that it was attached to traveled at incredible speeds, carrying her down the slope and into the middle of the river.

The charging beast barreled into Emerson as it crossed into the middle of the river, causing the girl to fall onto her hands and knees into the shallow water with a yelp and leave Hiro speechless.

"We've got a big arm!" Juan cried out in panic, aiming his combat rifle at the special infected as it lifted Savannah in and out of the deepest section of the water, causing her to sputter for air.

"SAVANNAH!" Emerson cried out as she rose back to her feet in the river. Being the closest to Savannah, she wanted to do something to help. However, all of her items had been left on the riverbank and before she could even think about going to retrieve her crowbar, the two men began to unload their ammunition into the charging infected.

As soon as the infected keeled over and began to sink to the riverbed from its high muscle mass, Emerson hurried over to help the blonde as she bobbed up out of the water, even though it meant the girl had to swim a little in the water that was deeper than she was tall.

"I've got you, Savannah!" The brunette wrapped an arm around the woman and quickly swam until she could touch the riverbed again as Juan hurried down the slope.

The blond began to pull some of her own weight now, touching her own feet to the riverbed. Emerson held her hand tightly, wading with her in case she lost her balance.

"Savannah.. Your head.." Hiro lifted a finger, pointing to the blonde woman.

Exhausted and unwell from the attack, the blonde attempted to maintain her usual attitude as a thick, warm liquid trickled down the side of her head. "Didn't anyone.. Ever tell you.. That it's rude to point?" She let out with some effort.

Hiro frowned, taking his partially filled first-aid kit off of his back and coming over to Savannah and Emerson as they stepped onto the riverbank. He reached into the first-aid kit for some gauze and went to wipe the blood away from Savannah's temple.

Savannah irritably knocked his hand way before he could do so, much to everyone's surprise.

"I don't need.. Your help." She breathed, letting go of Emerson's hand and moving over to a dry log at the edge of the riverbank. "I just.. Need to rest." The blonde eased herself onto said log.

"Savannah, you're really hurt." Juan told her with obvious concern in his voice as more blood dripped down from the side of her head.

Emerson, who was now clean of Boomer bile, slipped back into her shoes and quickly gathered up her things, as if to distract herself temporarily from Savannah's sorry state. She strapped her first-aid kit onto her back and clipped her jar of green liquid as well as the adrenaline shot to her dress before standing upright with her rusty crowbar in her right hand. "At least let me treat your wounds!" She begged Savannah, shifting her wet feet around in her ballet flats.

"_At least let me treat your wounds!"_

Perhaps it was because she had suffered an injury to the head, but Savannah suddenly saw a vision of her son, standing where Emerson was and wanting to play doctor as a little boy.

She suddenly cracked a smile. "Alright."

Emerson's face lit up with hope, along with the other chocolate eyed members of the survivor group.

"May I?" Emerson asked, going up to Hiro and reaching out for the bit of gauze that he had been holding onto. Hiro nodded and handed it to her.

The brunette went over to Savannah, gently wiping away the trickling blood with the gauze. "Sorry I don't have gloves or anything." She apologized.

"In the zombie apocalypse, gloves are the least of our worries." Juan responded, and came forward with an adhesive bandage that he handed off to the girl.

"Thanks." Emerson smiled warmly, accepting it and carefully removing the strips covering the adhesive before applying the bandage.

"There.." Emerson said, taking a step back. "All better."

"Thank you, baby girl." Savannah told the brunette as she rose to her feet. "I am feeling much better now." It was true, she wasn't just saying it to reassure the others. She wasn't sure why, but something about Emerson treating her head wound had made her feel better in more ways than one. She shook her head to try and brush it off. "My shotgun might be worthless after that attack in the river. Let's try and find me another gun."

"We can head up here." Hiro pointed in the opposite direction that the river was flowing to reveal a wooden staircase built into the slope. "It'll be easier than trying to head back up where we came down."

Savannah retrieved her flashlight from her shotgun before tossing the most likely useless weapon down. "I say we go."

The survivors moved along the riverbank, smooth stones crunching and sliding underfoot as the river roared past them. As Hiro lifted his foot onto the first step of the stairs, Juan cupped a hand around his ear.

"Hey, does anyone else hear that?"

"Can't hear anything over the sound of the river." Savannah hit the side of her head that wasn't bandaged, trying to knock any water out of her ears.

"Alright then." Juan mumbled uncomfortably, trying to shake it off as he proceeded up the steps with the rest of the group.

As the sound of the river itself faded away, the sights and sounds upstream of the river area came into view. There was a large, gray castle to the right, the door to which appeared to be a safe room door. There was also the sound of crying in the air.

"There's a witch around here!" Emerson called out in a whisper as the common infected of the new area began to rush towards them. "Don't shoot!" Emerson begged the others in a hushed voice. "Just shove them back!"

The men seemed somewhat surprised, whereas Savannah did not appear to react. Instead, she switched her flashlight off and attacked the oncoming infected with the only weapon she had left: Her frying pan.

Hiro and Juan obeyed Emerson's request, knocking back oncoming infected with their guns until Emerson and Savannah had a chance to kill the infected by hand. It went against their usual tactics, but it seemed to work.

Savannah bashed in the face of the last infected, and everyone stopped to breathe.

"Emerson.. Why didn't you want us to shoot?" Juan asked the girl as he gazed down at his combat rifle.

"Because we don't know where the Witch is!" Emerson explained. "If you fired your guns without knowing where she was, a stray bullet could have hit her, and she might have known that it was from us!"

"You really think so?" Juan looked back and forth from his gun to Emerson.

"I'm pretty sure that even when they seem like they don't notice us nearby, they're just pretending." Emerson explained again. "Trying to ignore us until they just can't anymore. That's when they turn towards you and start to growl."

"Better safe than sorry, I guess." Juan nodded, remembering back to what had happened to Hiro at the claws of a Witch not that long ago.

"We should head for that castle." Savannah pointed her frying pan in the direction of the large, stone structure. "It looks like it's a safe room, and I think it leads to the other side of the festival where the evac center is going to be."

"Yes, we have to pass through the castle to get to the other side of the festival." Hiro confirmed. "..But I don't know the castle very well. I'm sorry."

"Hey, you got us this far. Don't sweat it." Juan patted the raven haired boy on the shoulder as he walked by him.

The castle had a drawbridge-style entrance to it that was permanently open, as it was simply for show. As the survivors drew closer to the castle, the crying that they had previously heard grew louder, and they could see a figure kneeling in the front of the open safe room door of the castle.

"_Dios mios!" _Juan stopped dead in his tracks. "That Witch is right in front of the safe room!"

The other survivors stopped as well, squinting and straining their eyes to see the figure.

"Are you _sure _that's a Witch?" Savannah asked with obvious uncertainty in her voice.

"I'm pretty sure." Juan responded.

"That's definitely a Witch." Emerson confirmed grimly. "Look at the way she's kind of rocking back and forth."

Hiro gripped his chrome shotgun tightly and looked around at the other survivors. "What do we do?"

Savannah put a hand on the bandage that Emerson had recently put on her after her pummeling in the river. She sighed and held her hand out in Juan's direction.

"Juan, give me that lighter."

"Eh?" He gave her an odd look, but dropped the brown lighter into her open palm, anyways.

Savannah accepted the lighter, pulling the molotov that she had confiscated from Hiro off of her fanny pack. Emerson's chocolate eyes widened in disbelief.

"Savannah, what are you doing?!"

"The only thing I can think of." The blonde responded as she lit the fuse on the bottle. She ran forward before hurling it as far as she could towards the castle entrance.

The brown bottle broke only feet away from the Witch. In the millisecond between the bottle breaking and the flames spreading, the Witch could tell the direction that the molotov came from, and had a general idea of who threw it.

The Witch rose to her feet, shrieking in anger, not pain, as flames licked at her frail body. Suddenly, her frail, flaming figure was headed straight for Savannah.

"Aim for her head!" Emerson cried out as quickly as she could as she got in between Savannah and the Witch, hoping that would buy the survivors some time as Juan and Hiro took aim and began to fire. She squeezed her eyes shut and spread her arms out in attempts to protect Savannah from the special infected.

The Witch fell to her knees and keeled over as the flames that had singed her body died out.

Emerson slowly opened one of her chocolate eyes that she had squeezed shut so tight, then the other. She slowly lowered her arms.

"I-It's over?" She let out, looking around. "Nobody was hurt by the Witch?"

"Doesn't look like it." Savannah responded from behind Emerson, gently putting her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Thank you, baby girl. For your suggestion to aim for the head _and _for your willingness to protect me. You may have just saved my dress from those Witch's claws." Savannah chuckled as she moved past Emerson and stepped over the Witch's corpse, headed in the direction of the castle safe room. "But you're so young. You have a whole life ahead of you if you survive this thing. We're the ones that should be protecting you."

Emerson ran to catch up with Savannah, and the men trailed behind them.

"I just remembered what you did to that Witch that hurt Hiro last!" The girl beamed up at the blonde as they walked towards the castle together. "That shot to her head seemed to really do it!"

Savannah smiled down at Emerson before gazing back in the direction of the castle. "Maybe so, but it could have also been that you and Hiro took a lot out of her by the time I stepped in."

"Nuh uh." Emerson shook her head, smiling. "I don't think so. I think you crowned the evil Witch when you did that." The girl then gazed at the ground, and spoke in a hushed voice. "...I didn't want to see you get hurt again, Savannah. That's why I stepped out in front of you."

"Hmm?" The blonde looked to the girl, then quickly gazed over her shoulder to see that the men were lagging far enough behind for the two ladies to have a private conversation.

"I was really worried about you when the big arm - little arm zombie started pummeling you in the river.. And the thought of you getting attacked by a Witch, especially so soon after that.." Emerson's lower lip began to tremble. Her voice cracked. "It's really scary."

"Oh, baby girl." Savannah put an arm around the girl as they walked, not stopping now since they were so close to the safe room. "You know that I'm not going anywhere."

"Not by choice." Emerson sniffed as tears began to roll down her face. "But that doesn't mean something won't happen to you anyways!"

"You've gotta stop crying, sweetie." Savannah urged her as she shuffled Emerson across the drawbridge. "What if your nose starts bleeding again? We just got you cleaned up."

"I don't care." Emerson whined as the wooden drawbridge creaked under their weight.

"Everything's gonna be fine." Savannah cooed as if to a baby, trying to reassure the girl as best she could despite them being in the middle of an apocalypse. She gently nudged Emerson into the safe room.

"_Dios mios, _don't tell me.. It's _another_ Witch?" Juan turned to Hiro once the sound of Emerson's cries hit him.

Hiro shook his head. "I don't think it is this time." He turned away from the other man before running to catch up with Savannah and Emerson, who had already made it all the way into the castle safe room.

"Hey, wait up!" Juan cried out, trotting after him. The last one into the safe room, he slammed the door shut behind himself without looking back.


	7. DEATH DUNGEON - 3 - The Castle

_**Death Dungeon - 3 - The Castle **_

The castle safe room was certainly roomier than the last safe room that the survivors had been in. It served as an entry point in and out of the castle. It _had _to be slightly roomier than a ticket booth.

Savannah picked up a combat shotgun that was leaning against the stone wall to replace the pump shotgun that she had dropped back out on the festival grounds. "This'll do." She said after examining it briefly.

Behind her, Emerson was fixated on some of the graffiti lining the wall of the safe room.

"_I'm going to ride a horse out of here." _Was written in a fat, red marker.

"_They're all dead." _Was written underneath that in nice, cursive handwriting.

"_No they're not." _Was written in that same red marker.

Emerson turned away from the wall.

Hiro and Juan were crouched in front of a pile of ammunition, picking out the right kind that their respective guns would take.

"Anyone who doesn't have a fully-stocked first-aid kit better grab one, then let's get out of here." Savannah told the others, cocking her combat shotgun.

Juan and Hiro slid their first-aid kits off of their backs, allowing them to fall to the concrete floor with soft thuds. Juan gently kicked them out of the way, sending them sliding across the floor as the two men picked up new, fully stocked first-aid kits from a corner opposite of the ammo pile. They strapped them to their backs before Juan nodded to Savannah.

"We're ready." He told her.

Juan unbarred and kicked open the exit door to the safe room that lead into the depths of the castle. At first, it seemed as though the infected didn't notice him or the other survivors standing there. Some staggered back and forth, or sat on the ground, hunched over. One infected damsel even vomited blood all over her lovely emerald gown. Impatiently, Savannah raised her shotgun and began to pick them off.

After the first shot from the blonde's combat shotgun, the infected began to notice the survivors. But by then, Juan and Hiro had already begun to fire at the oncoming infected, as well. Having cleared out the first chamber of the castle, the survivors stepped over the bodies of the infected.

The first chamber that the survivors were in was very big, and it was somewhat surprising that it didn't hold more infected initially. Savannah turned her flashlight back on to give them a bit of extra light, sweeping the large chamber for anymore infected. Instead of picking up something visually, the survivors picked up on something audibly.

A high-pitched squealing could be heard echoing throughout the Chamber, and Savannah had a hard time pinpointing the location of the creature making the sound as she swept her flashlight about the chamber. The beam landed on the special infected just before she hurled a green, ball of acid at the survivors.

"Acid incoming!" Savannah shouted, and the group immediately dispersed as the green acid pooled out where they had been standing previously.

After the group had successfully avoided the acid attack, Juan looked around for their assailant, but did not see her. "Where'd she go?!" He cried out.

Hiro suddenly felt claws on his lower back, though they were nothing compared to those of the Witch that had attacked him earlier that night. He took a hand off of his chrome shotgun and reached back to touch at the stinging wounds before whirling around to find himself with a rather unsightly infected. Up close, he could see that her lower face was nearly entirely eroded away, possibly from her own acid. Without hesitating, he shoved the barrel of his shotgun into her mouth, pulling the trigger.

The other survivors turned around to the sound of the gunshot, seeing Hiro covered in more blood and guts than usual.

"Spitter." He said plainly as he coined a new term for the special infected he had just killed.

The group proceeded deeper into the castle when they were suddenly presented with two options: A staircase that lead up, and a staircase that lead down.

"Does anyone know which way we should go?" Juan asked the others with uncertainty in his voice.

"Maybe we should try upstairs." Emerson suggested, turning to Juan. "We might be able to see the evacuation center if we can get high enough in the castle!"

"Emerson's right. We should head up." Savannah informed the others before she headed up the flight of stairs.

The stairs were not straightforward. It was a tight, spiral staircase made out of stone that was illuminated by medieval sconces lining the walls. Although it was enchanting, in truth, it was a poor design choice. It was not ideal for a flood of people traveling the stairs in both directions simultaneously.

The top of the stairs lead to a long corridor lined with stained glass windows along the left that Emerson thought would have been beautiful in the daylight. The survivors passed down the corridor, picking off the few infected that were lingering there.

"This would be a bad place for a Witch, huh?" Juan joked, gripping his combat rifle as he moved along with the others. Suddenly, something caught Emerson's eye, and she separated from the group.

Over the sounds of their gunshots, the three older survivors did not hear Emerson's footsteps as she departed from their party.

"The zombies in here are certainly fancier than the ones we saw outside." Juan commented, gently kicked the foot of a female infected wearing a ruby red gown.

"You mean like this?" Emerson sounded from behind them.

The other survivors turned around to see that Emerson was wearing a conical hennin in the same shade of purple as her dress, adorned with a yellow chiffon veil.

"Yeah, like that!" Juan grinned, pointing at Emerson while gazing at the other survivors to see what they thought.

"Emerson, where did you find that?" Savannah asked the girl.

"On that cart over there." Emerson responded, pointing back to a wooden cart in the corridor lined with hennins in all kinds of bright colors. Sapphire blues, emerald greens, ruby reds, amethyst purples, etc.

"You don't know where that's been." Savannah told her gently. "Put it back."

"Aww, come on, Savannah." Juan nudged the blonde. "It's the zombie apocalypse. Let the girl have some fun."

"Something's creeping up behind Emerson." Hiro stated, but no one seemed to hear his soft-spoken voice.

"But the sign on the cart says they're for sale!" Emerson told Savannah, hoping that would convince the blonde to let her keep the hennin. "So that must mean they're new!"

"You guys." Hiro pointed in Emerson's direction.

"Oh, I guess it wouldn't hurt." Savannah gave in.

"Oh, thank you, Savannah!" The girl cheered, leaping into the air with excitement before rushing over to hug the woman. As she did so, Juan and Savannah finally noticed what Hiro had been trying to bring to their attention.

There was a shriek piercing the air as Emerson was suddenly tackled to the ground in front of the other survivors. The Hunter had her pinned face down in front of them, and immediately began to claw at her bare skin exposed by the low back of her dress.

"Get it off, get it off!" Emerson howled, reaching out to the others desperately as gashes were made in her delicate skin.

Savannah and Hiro's shotguns both fired at around the same time, killing the Hunter as it let out a pathetic whimper.

The Hunter slumped off of Emerson, who shakily got on her knees, and then her feet. Her chocolate eyes were brimmed with tears.

"Em, are you alright?" Juan asked as the other survivors rushed over to her.

"This.. This really hurts.." Emerson winced, tempted to reach around and touch at the gashes on her upper back, just below her first-aid kit.

"We just got you cleaned up, too." Savannah sighed, sliding her first-aid kit off of her back. "Everyone hold up for a minute."

Savannah and Emerson both knelt on the ground next to the corpse of the Hunter as the blonde began to unzip her first-aid kit. Emerson slipped her own kit carefully off of her back so that her wounds were more accessible to the older female.

"This will sting a little." Savannah said, shaking up a small bottle of an antibiotic aerosol before spraying it on the deep gashes covering Emerson's back.

The girl let out a yelp, bunching up the skirt of her dress in her hands until the stinging sensation passed.

As Savannah dropped the empty canister and reached into the first-aid kit for some gauze, Hiro and Juan turned their heads to the sound of convulsive laughter coming further down the corridor.

"That sounds like a Jockey." Juan said, eyeing Hiro momentarily before the special infected in question came trotting down the corridor at them.

Hiro fired off a few shots at the Jockey, but either his aim wasn't on point or he wasn't dealing enough damage to take the creature down. Aim could have very well have been the problem, because the zig-zag lines that the Jockey was running in made it difficult for Juan to land a hit with his combat rifle, as well. In the blink of a chocolate eye, the Jockey leapt through the air, grappling onto Juan's face.

"What the hell?!" Juan dropped his combat rifle and immediately began to wobble back and forth as the Jockey seemingly steered him by jerking his ears left and right. Hiro watched in bewilderment, unsure of what to do since the ladies were so caught up in their first-aid regimen. The raven haired boy looked back and forth from his chrome shotgun to his pistols, wondering which would be safer to use to shoot the Jockey off of Juan. Before he could decide, the howling infected steered Juan into Savannah, causing him to trip over her from where she was kneeling on the floor behind Emerson.

"Ow! Watch it, you big oaf!" Savannah called out angrily, oblivious to what was going on as she finished taping gauze to Emerson's gashes.

As Juan hit the floor with the Jockey still clinging to him, a small window of opportunity opened itself up to Hiro. He fired a few rounds from his shotgun into the Jockey's side.

The Jockey let out a whinny of sorts as life left its mutated body, and its grip on Juan's face was released.

Juan groaned as he got back on his feet, going back over to where Hiro was to retrieve his combat rifle that he had dropped during the attack. At this time, Emerson and Savannah rose as well, having finished healing the girl's wounds. Emerson carefully put her first-aid kit back on in such a way that it would not disturb her fresh dressings. Savannah left the carcass of her first-aid kit where it was next to the Hunter's corpse, for it was depleted of supplies.

"I'm starting to remember a little bit about this part of the castle now." Hiro began, his eyes fixated on the Jockey's corpse. "If we keep down the hall, we should find a watch tower."

"Great, we should be able to see the evac center from up there." Savannah said, cocking her shotgun. "Lead the way."

Hiro slid his chrome shotgun onto his back, switching it out for his twin pistols as he lead the way down the corridor. He was preparing to take a right down the corridor when he could see the belly of a Boomer bulging out from the narrow doorway. He backed up into the other survivors before firing his pistols, grazing the belly of the beast. Apparently Hiro had not been far enough away when he fired off his shots, because as the Boomer ruptured, he found himself covered in Bile.

"Is this some kind of a joke?" Savannah uttered bitterly from behind Hiro and Juan as infected could be heard in the distance, attracted to the Boomer Bile. "You have to be more careful!"

"They're coming!" Emerson cried out, turning around as infected flooded from both directions of the corridor. As the first infected approached Emerson at high speeds, the girl clawed the infected damsel's face with her crowbar, seemingly peeling the skin away and leaving nothing but muscle behind. Emerson's eyes widened a bit in disgust, and she promptly kicked the infected women in the abdomen to knock her back and away from herself until the faceless infected was shot down by Savannah.

Hiro could barely see anything with the Boomer Bile running into his eyes. It burned, but not nearly as bad as he expected the corrosive acid of a Spitter to. He messily wiped his face on his sleeve, blindly shooting in front with one hand. Wiping his face didn't seem to help his vision.

"Hiro, crouch down!" Juan called out to the younger man, struggling to shoot past him in the corridor filled with infected individuals.

"What?!" Hiro called back over the sounds of gunshots and the infected making incoherent sounds of their own. Did he get Boomer Bile in his ears, too?

"I said, _crouch down!_" Juan firmly planted his palm on Hiro's head before pushing him down to the ground, rapidly firing at the infected that were coming at them now that he had a clear shot.

It seemed as if the effects of the Bile wore off as soon as Juan had forced Hiro into a crouching position so that he could shoot over him, because the infected stopped coming shortly after that. The Hispanic man let out a sigh of relief, and held out a hand to the raven haired boy to help him back up. "Sorry about that, Hiro."

"What?" Hiro asked loudly before sticking his pinkie finger into his right ear, wiggling it around. When he popped it out, a little bit of Boomer Bile oozed from his ear canal onto the shoulder of his formerly white shirt.

"Vile." Savannah scowled at the sight, turning away to see Emerson scraping the face of an infected off of her rusty crowbar onto the corridor's stone wall. The blonde sighed a bit. "Let's get going. Maybe _I _should take the lead."

"But Savannah," Juan began. "You've never been here bef-"

"It can't be too hard to figure out." The blonde responded, moving past the men in such a way that she didn't get any of Hiro's Boomer Bile smeared onto herself.

Through the passageway that Hiro had tried to lead the group through before the Boomer attack was another spiral staircase, tighter than the one from before. Savannah figured that if they wanted to reach the watchtower, they would have to keep heading up. "Up these stairs." She said to the others, carefully going around each curve just in case something was waiting for her around the bend.

Savannah was immediately presented with fresh, night air and infected individuals when she reached the top of the spiral staircase. Her blonde braid began to billow in the night breeze, as did her rose print sundress and the vibrant dresses of the infected maidens that rushed at Savannah from the top of the open watchtower she had entered. Savannah knocked a maiden back with her combat shotgun, then took the opportunity to blast the left side of her face off as the infected woman stumbled. The blonde shuffled to the right, giving room for the other survivors to join her on top of the watchtower.

Surprisingly, the infected on top of the watchtower appeared mainly to be maidens. But from around a spyre, a new kind of infected suddenly presented itself to one of the survivors.

Without thinking, Emerson slammed the length of her rusty crowbar into the body of a medieval knight. Not only did the metal on metal contact cause the aged crowbar to facture half of the way down, but it only stumbled the infected knight in shining armor. Dumbfounded, Emerson stared down at her half of a crowbar, then promptly dropped it and got into a defensive position as she realized that the knight had recovered from the stumble.

Hiro was the first to turn away from the common infected maidens and realize that the girl was in trouble. "Emerson!" He called out, causing Juan and Savannah to look over as he fired off a shot from his pistols at the uncommon medieval knight.

The bullet ricocheted off of the knight's chest plate, leaving only a small dent behind as it vanished in an unknown direction. Hiro prepared to fire again, when Savannah suddenly called out to him. "Don't shoot, the ricochet is too dangerous!"

Hiro turned back to look at Savannah. "Then what am I supposed to-"

The blonde rushed past Hiro while Juan picked off the remaining infected maidens with his combat rifle. Savannah slid her combat shotgun onto her back, trading it out for her trusty frying pan. She darted in between Emerson and the infected knight while there was still room to do so, then sharply knocked the infected back with her black skillet. As she did, something very interesting happened.

The knight's helmet fell off, clattering to the stone ground of the watchtower. Savannah wasted no time, and drew her frying pan back with both hands before striking the uncommon infected upside the head with her skillet. This hit seemed to do the job.

The survivors gathered around the body of the recently deceased knight now that the coast was clear. Juan put a hand on top of his fireman's hat and made a face. "Damn, now we have to watch out for zombies wearing suits of armor?"

"Knock their helmets off and aim for the head." Savannah informed everyone before turning her body to Emerson. "That's how I managed to kill that one." The blonde then handed her skillet off to the brunette. "Take this until you find something better to use, baby girl."

"Is anyone else running low on ammunition?" Hiro asked the group after switching out his weapons as Savannah approached the brink of the watchtower, propping her foot up on the edge and holding her hand to her forehead in a saluting position as she gazed out into the distant night.

"I'm running low on ammo." Juan responded. "What about you, Savannah?"

The blonde didn't answer right away. Her olive green eyes were fixated on the evacuation center they had been trying to reach the entire time. The searchlights were still off. There were no signs of helicopters. Things weren't looking good.

"I'm running low, too." She responded as she moved away from the edge of the watchtower. "I can see the evac center from here, but it doesn't look good."

"I-I can take it!" Emerson stood up straight, tightly gripping the black skillet that Savannah had loaned to her in attempts to look resilient and valiant.

"Give it to us straight, Savannah." Juan insisted as a breeze picked up. Hair and clothing began to billow in said breeze. Juan's open fireman jacket tried to do the same, but it was a bit too dense of a material.

"I don't think we're getting rescued at the evacuation center." Savannah told them. "It looks deserted. I think we're finding our own way out of here."

Emerson's heart sank to her stomach. She tried not to let her face do the same, as she wanted to appear resilient in front of the other survivors. She wanted to appear strong. She wanted to appear capable. She gripped the frying pan more tightly, hoping that no one would have known that she was secretly doing it to feel more secure. The girl averted her chocolate eyes, and allowed her dress, hair, and the veil of her hennin to billow in the night breeze.

"Let's find the next safe room and try to figure out a plan from there." Juan suggested before looking to all of the survivors to see what each of them thought. "How does that sound?"

Emerson turned her attention back to the group and nodded slowly, still tightly gripping the frying pan that Savannah had loaned to her. Hiro nodded as well. Savannah seemed to be the only one who wasn't entirely on board with the plan, because her arms were crossed and she was gazing in another direction. When she noticed that Juan was staring at her, expecting an answer, she dropped her arms down to her sides momentarily with a sigh before crossing them again and giving a solemn nod.

"We want to head this way." Hiro said, taking the lead once more. He lead the group to the brim of the top of the watchtower where there was a break in the edge, and a wooden suspension bridge lead across a gap in the castle to another structure similar to the watchtower. Hiro took the first step onto the bridge, and it began to creak and sway. He hesitated momentarily, then proceeded to walk along the wooden planks that were there to support him and the other survivors underfoot.

Savannah, who was right behind Hiro, let the raven haired boy go first. When she reached the bridge, she gazed down, and immediately went dizzy. She grabbed onto the post securing the bridge to the watchtower to steady herself. "This is.. The only way across?" She asked somewhat nauseously, gazing up.

Hiro had now crossed to the structure on the other side of the wooden suspension bridge, and turned around to face her. "This is the quickest way. We might get lost if we were to back the way that we went."

Juan suddenly began to snicker from directly behind the blonde. "What's wrong? Savannah, are you afraid of heights?"

"Eat crap!" Savannah shouted over her shoulder at the giggling man. "Can't you see how high up we are?" The blonde nervously gazed down at the bridge, placing one hiking boot onto the first plank. She didn't like how it creaked under her weight.

"If it were me, you'd be saying that we don't have all day!" Juan teased, causing Savannah to let out a low, angry growl in front of him.

"You guys, we need to be on the same team here!" Emerson peered out from behind Juan, frowning.

"Ha, yeah." Juan sighed, gazing down at the ground momentarily before lifting his head. "Uh, Savannah. I can go first if you like. To prove that it's safe."

"I can do it without you." The blonde grumbled, slowly walking across the wooden suspension bridge with her arms spread out for balance.

Emerson watched with a worried look on her face and bated breath. She was less concerned that the blonde would fall, and was more concerned for Savannah's mental and emotional wellbeing surrounding the situation.

As soon as Savannah neared the other side, she picked up speed and hopped to safety on the other watchtower-like structure as quickly as she could.

"That wasn't that bad." Hiro offered her a grin when she joined him on the other side.

Savannah scoffed. She seemed to be back to her usual self now, because she turned back towards the bridge and called out to Juan and Emerson "Hurry along now, we need to get out of here."

Juan and Emerson began to cross together, the bridge thankfully holding both of their weight. However, that wasn't a surprise to anyone other than Savannah.

"This next part leads directly into the dungeon." Hiro told the other survivors as he entirely bypassed another staircase on this new watchtower that they were now on. Instead, he approached what appeared to be cellar doors, fiddled with them a bit, then jerked them open with an obnoxious creak.

Almost immediately, homely looking infected in the dank, stoney chamber below gazed up at the survivors that had suddenly presented themselves in the moonlight, and scrambled for the rickety, old maintenance ladder connecting the space between the dungeon and the rooftop. Hiro cocked his chrome shotgun, blasting the heads off of the homely infected that attempted to climb up the decaying ladder.

After allowing himself to be splattered in more blood and giving time for the bodies of the headless infected to fall to the dungeon floor, Hiro began down the unsound ladder.

The other survivors all followed down one at a time, knocking back oncoming infected as they needed to in the poor lighting. The dungeon was lined with sconces, but with far and few between. Savannah's flashlight would come in handy.

The sounds of water droplets falling could be heard echoing throughout the dungeon. Whether it was recording set to play or a genuine leak was uncertain. Hiro and Savannah kept in the front of the group, picking off idling infected with their shotguns while Juan and Emerson lingered in the back, taking in the details that were put into the dungeon.

"Hey, do you think all of this stuff is real, or they made it for the exhibit?" Juan asked, pointing a thumb in the direction of an iron maiden in a corner of the stoney chamber.

"I'd rather not find out." Emerson expressed, a shiver creeping up her spine as her eyes fell on a rack-styled torture device. However, her eyes widened, not in fear or disgust, when her eyes fell on something else in the dungeon.

Juan's chocolate eyes followed her gaze, then widened as well. "Holy guacamole! Is that thing real?!"

Emerson slowly strapped Savannah's frying pan to her back, not taking her eyes off of what it was that she and Juan were seeing. She slowly approached it.

Hiro glanced over his shoulder to see that the others were a ways behind them, and nudged Savannah. The blonde turned around while it was safe to do so with no infected presently around.

The brunette girl approached a mossy stone wall of the dungeon that was illuminated by one of the rare sconces. The moss that the wall was lined with was a natural looking green, but when Emerson reached out to touch it, the moss crunched dryly beneath her fingers, signifying to her that the moss of the dungeon wall was likely fake.

Her fingertips scraped along the stoney walls covered in faux moss until she reached a rack situated a few feet below the sconce. It was up high enough that she had to stand on the tips of her toes in her black ballet flats to reach what was resting on its hooks: The item that she and Juan had spotted.

With both hands, Emerson carefully gripped the handles of the axe and lifted it off of the rack. She stumbled with it a bit at first as she adjusted to its unevenly placed weight. It was heavier than her brother's electric guitar, and much heavier than the rusty crowbar or Savannah's frying pan. The brunette stepped away from the wall and swung the axe carefully, slicing the air with a _whooshing _sound.

"Now _that's _a suitable weapon." Savannah smirked in approval, glad that Emerson had found something better to defend herself with than the frying pan she had loaned to the girl.

"It definitely looks like a medieval battle axe." Hiro commented. "But is it real? I mean, is the blade real?"

"We're about to find out." Savannah said moments after the vocalizations and rapid footsteps of many infected could be heard from further down the dungeon.

"I think I'm feeling the axe right now, too." Juan smiled at Emerson, trading out his low-ammo combat rifle for the fireman's axe on his back. The two of them lingered in the back of the group where they would not be in the way of Hiro and Savannah's gunfire, and could instead hack apart the infected that managed to get past the first line of defense.

Savannah and Hiro shot as quickly as they could at the oncoming horde, but the truth was, their shotguns just could not fire as quickly as some other guns could. That, and their ammunition was running low.

As if on cue, Savannah suddenly called out "I'm out of ammo!" and opted to knock back infected with the length of her combat shotgun. To reserve what little ammo he had left in his own shotgun, Hiro whipped out his pistols once more.

"_I'll have to give Savannah the frying pan back after this." _Emerson thought to herself as a homely looking infected man missing his right arm below the shoulder rushed up to her, growling incoherent sounds. Now was the moment of truth when she would find out how the battle axe would hold up against the infected.

Emerson brought the axe back, almost touching her voluminous hair with the blade before swinging it forward into the torso of the infected fellow. The honed blade of the axe cut deeply into the left flank of the infected, exposing his entrails somewhat as he fell to the ground.

"It worked." Emerson blinked as she gazed down at the body of the infected, then quickly raised her axe and swung again as another infected managed to get passed Savannah and Hiro. "It worked!" She grinned, decapitating a homely infected maiden.

Juan brought his fireman's axe down hard on the head of the last infected of the the horde, splitting its skull. He wiped sweat from his brow onto the sleeve of his dense, flame resistant jacket. "Glad that's over."

"Let's find the next safe room before something else shows up, like a Tank." Savannah advised, preparing to round the corner in the dungeon when Emerson suddenly ran up to her.

"Here! You can take your frying pan back now!" Emerson told the blonde, turning around so that the older female could remove the skillet from where it was strapped to the girl's back. "Now that I have this big axe, I don't need it anymore, and with you being out of ammo and all.."

"Good thinking." Savannah smiled, tucking the depleted shotgun away onto her own back before wrangling with Emerson's black-tipped tresses for the frying pan. "Thank you, baby girl."

"We should head up the stairs." Hiro gestured with the pistol in his right hand to the staircase to the right that Savannah had been about to head up before Emerson had stopped her. Surprisingly, this staircase was not of the spiral style.

"There should be a safe room anywhere around here." Hiro announced once the group had reached the top of the stairs, then immediately spotted one fifteen or so feet down the corridor to the left. "There! In the passage room leading back into the main castle!"

At once, the survivors hurried towards the open safe room, though Savannah slowed to a stop halfway down the corridor when she heard a sudden, familiar, horrible hacking sound back the way they came. While the other survivors rushed into the safe room, having not realized that she wasn't behind them, the blonde stood in place, tightly gripping her frying pan. She parted her lips and slowly raised the frying pan as she pondered whether or not she was hearing things, and if that sound really was what she thought it was.

A couple of feet from behind Savannah, an eerily familiar special infected shuffled up the stairs into the back end of the corridor before letting out a raspy shriek. Savannah's eyes widened. Her heart stood still in her chest. She nearly dropped the frying pan out of fear.

Hearing the unusual shriek so close by caught the attention of the other survivors, who now realized that Savannah was not in the safe room with them. Juan was the first one to turn around and notice what was happening.

"Savannah, behind you!" He called out, and quickly dropped his fireman's axe onto the safe room floor as he reached around for his combat rifle.

Savannah whirled around to see herself staring at an infected with masses on its face that was coughing and hacking. It was identical to the creature that her husband had turned into in virtually all aspects except that the one before her now had been wearing different clothing when it turned.

Savannah's arms fell limply to her sides, her fingers releasing their grip on the frying pan that clattered loudly against the floor when it fell.

The sudden movement seemed to elicit a response from the special infected, as it immediately shot a tentacle out from its face at Savannah: Its tongue.

"Oh no, you don't!" Juan cried out, firing his last stream of bullets from his combat rifle at the special infected just as the tongue began to wrap around Savannah's waist.

The special infected went down in a plume of smoke, its tentacle-like tongue going limp much like Savannah's arms did. The blonde didn't seem to react to any of this. She simply stood there, olive green eyes wide, heart pounding in her chest. Juan and Emerson quickly raced out towards her while Hiro remained inside of the safe room to hold down the fortress.

"What happened to her?!" Emerson cried out to Juan when they reached Savannah, who was still unresponsive to her surroundings.

"I don't know!" Juan answered, quickly tucking the combat rifle away onto his back before lifting Savannah up over his shoulder. "Let's just get her to safety!"

"Right!" Emerson nodded, picking up the frying pan that the blonde and left behind and followed after Juan back into the safe room. As the smoke dissipated, she took one last look at the body of the infected that Savannah had struggled against, and then promptly locked the safe room door.


End file.
